


Additional Duties

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: Nuns in the casino [1]
Category: Wiseguy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 08:32:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11077866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: There are a lot of things they don't tell you about working in a casino.  Vinnie just found out one of them.





	Additional Duties

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Michelle Christian (movies_michelle)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/movies_michelle/gifts).



Vinnie wasn't in the greatest mood when he walked into the casino at nearly three-thirty in the afternoon. It was a ridiculous time to be getting back from lunch, but at least he knew Sonny wouldn't be ticked off about it; Sonny had predicted it, for God's sake. In a way, Sonny was responsible.

The two and a half hours he'd spent actually eating lunch with Mahoney and Harry and two of the girls from the counting room and one from the secretarial pool had been a complete waste of time in terms of a legal investigation, and Vinnie hadn't expected anything different, and that waste of time didn't piss him off. It was his half-hour conversation with McPike that had him angry and unsettled. Per Frank's orders, he'd given Uncle Mike a quick call before he'd gone to lunch, to let him know he was eating with Mahoney and Harry. And after lunch he'd called again, again per Frank's stupid orders, only this time Frank was actually there, wanting to know what Mahoney had said.

It was stupid, though Vinnie didn't say so. Well, not right away anyway; first he tried to tell Frank that it was more a social lunch than anything, even if he had been ordered by Sonny to go. There wasn't any business talk, unless you counted Mahoney telling him about Sonny's mathematical aptitude (which, from what Vinnie could understand, meant Sonny could add and subtract in his head). Frank didn't seem to get that, that just demanding information didn't mean Vinnie actually had any, so Vinnie began regaling him with all the stories about Sonny's childhood that he'd spent the last two and a half hours listening to. Frank had been strangely uninterested, and he'd kept trying to interrupt, and finally Vinnie had told him the whole thing was stupid and he'd hung up.

So Vinnie wasn't in the greatest of moods. All he wanted to do was to go upstairs, report in to Sonny, go to his apartment, and stand under a hot shower for a while, until his frustration was washed away.

He was walking past the roulette wheel, loosening his tie, when he saw a nun. _What?_ He did a double-take. Yeah, she was a nun all right, even if she was wearing the modified habit they'd changed to in the sixties—she was definitely a nun, and she was betting on sixteen red. Vinnie stopped and rubbed his eyes and when he looked again, there were two nuns. The new nun was wearing the old-fashioned habit of the Franciscan order. Vinnie remembered it well from his days at Mount Carmel High School. He stepped behind a pillar and scanned the rest of the casino. There were nuns everywhere. Nuns playing blackjack, nuns playing the slots, and one nun shooting craps. Vinnie resisted the urge to turn around and run—well, not run, but hurry, yes, hurry, out of the casino.

No, he didn't do that. He did stay safely behind his pillar, though. There were nuns in the casino, maybe a dozen of them. Nuns. In the casino.

There was something very wrong. Fleetingly, Vinnie wondered if he was being punished for hanging up on McPike, punished with a horde of nuns.

 _You're hiding from a bunch of nuns,_ he tried scolding himself, but it didn't work because, really, hiding from nuns had always seemed very reasonable to Vinnie, and apparently that hadn't changed any. _When Sonny wants to know what kept you so long, what're you going to tell him? That you've been hiding behind a pillar in the casino because you're afraid the nuns will get you?_

Vinnie came out from behind the pillar and walked—quickly, but he walked, to the elevator and pushed the UP button. In a few minutes that felt like an hour, the elevator doors opened and Vinnie got in, pushed the DOOR CLOSE button, and the doors slid shut, leaving him safely alone in the elevator, heading up.

No nuns followed him.

It wasn't that Vinnie was afraid of nuns; if he's been afraid of nuns, he'd never have made it through grade school, let alone high school. It was just that he seemed to attract nuns, and not in a good way—assuming there was a good way to attract nuns. **His** way of attracting nuns was they came over to him and started scolding him, not only for things he was doing or had done, but for things he was thinking about doing. Vinnie didn't know how they did that, he didn't want to know, he just wanted to stay away from them, because he'd also found that whatever he said in response was always the wrong thing, the thing that only made things worse and got his mother, his father, and sometimes his brother involved.  
_  
Don't be crazy, you're not a kid anymore, nobody's going to call your mother because you've been bad. You don't even live at home anymore._

Yeah, and that was another thing: he was working in Atlantic City in a glitzy hotel with its own casino, he was an undercover cop investigating mobsters. It wasn't what anyone would call a safe job, but its dangers were known. Finding the casino overrun with nuns was like living in the desert, where you knew you had to watch out for rattlesnakes only to walk out one morning and be mauled by a polar bear. Something about this wasn't right.

The elevator doors opened, and Vinnie stepped out on the business office floor and quickly looked around. No nuns. Not that he could see anyway. He went to Sonny's office.

Sid was there, which meant Sonny's mood was prickly and a little besieged. Vinnie said hello to both of them and sat down on the sofa. He stayed quiet while Sonny stared pointedly at Sid, who finally noticed and asked if there was something wrong.

"Not a thing, Sidney, but pleasant as your company is, you must have something better to do than hang around my office." And he said it with a straight face, which was pretty impressive.

Sid's face got that furious-but-trying-to-hide-it look it so often did when he was talking to Sonny. "Certainly," he said, and got up, and left, closing the door louder than necessary behind him.

"Sorry I interrupted," Vinnie said, and Sonny laughed. Vinnie got up and moved to the more-comfortable chair Sid had just vacated.

"It's a good thing for him those windows don't open," was all Sonny said. "So how was lunch?"

"Excessive," Vinnie said, making Sonny laugh again. "I feel like I ate all my lunches for the week at one time."

"Yeah, that's Mack. You get the girls back OK?"

"They're fine. Very happy."

"Yeah? How many happys did they have?"

"I wasn't counting. You didn't mention anything about me playing Carrie Nation. Anyway, I sent them all home."

Sonny nodded. "Good. Good. Hey, you all right? You look spooked. What'd Mack say to you, anyway?"

He wasn't going to mention the nuns. If he did, Sonny would want to know how many happys **he'd** had for lunch, and all he'd had was ginger ale. "You remember a girl named Nicola—"

Sonny was actually blushing, which, after what Mack had told Vinnie, wasn't unwarranted. "Yeah, yeah, Nikki DiBenedetto—"

"And you almost married her?"

"I didn't almost—you're upset 'cause I wanted to run off and get married when I was seventeen?" Sonny was giving him that smile, the one Vinnie knew was going to get him—maybe both of them—in real trouble some day.

"No, I'm not upset, you asked me what Mack talked about."

Sonny just sat and looked at him, smiling that smile. "Yeah, but you are upset. You look a little pale."

"The casino's full'a nuns," Vinnie blurted. He half-expected Sonny not to believe him. It just sounded weird.

Sonny's response surprised him. "Is it the second Tuesday of the month already?"

"What?"

"Second Tuesday of the month, the sisters come in on the bus, play the slots mostly, though Sister Augustina shoots craps like nobody I ever saw. She wasn't a nun, I'd swear she was palming the dice."

"You **know** there are a dozen nuns in your casino right now?" Vinnie asked. He'd thought things would be **more** normal in Sonny's office, not less.

"Probably more like two dozen. Wassa matter, you afraid one of 'em'll rap your knuckles with a ruler and give you extra homework? They're just here to have a good time, you got a problem with that?"

"No," Vinnie said. Sonny and nuns. That was—that was odd. That was wrong. He didn't want to think about that.

"Good." Sonny got up from his desk, came around to where Vinnie was sitting, and began messing with his tie. "Then let's get you tidied up and back downstairs."

"Back downstairs? To do what?"

Sonny was having trouble with the tie. "Stand up." Vinnie did. "You're gonna to go back down there wearing your very best altar boy look and you're gonna schmooze the nuns a little. They'll love you." Sonny had finished with his tie, though he was still stroking it lightly, with two fingers, as though appreciating the material. Vinnie wanted to tell him to stop it, he didn't want **those** kinds of thoughts in his head while he was talking to nuns. "You look real good," Sonny said softly. "The sisters are just gonna eat you up." He was making things worse and Vinnie knew he was doing it on purpose, and there was nothing Vinnie could do **because** he was doing it on purpose—if Vinnie told him to shut up, Sonny would know for sure that he was sending Vinnie downstairs to talk to nuns with a hard-on. Sonny stopped stroking his tie, patted his cheek. "You're going to say hello for me, you're going to buy them a few drinks, you're going to be your most charming. Pretend you're trying to get out of staying after class. You'll do great."

"Sonny—"

"You'll do great," Sonny repeated firmly, leading him toward the door. "Come back up to my place at seven, we'll have a nice dinner." Yeah, Sonny's smile said very clearly that Vinnie was screwed and Sonny knew it and was thoroughly enjoying it. "I bet the sisters'll just **love** you."

**Author's Note:**

> This was a small present for Michelle Christian, something she inspired *g* & said I should post. So, here it is.


End file.
